LaxTV Forums | A Forum About The MCLA

Below is a link to a study by the NFHS about participation in high school sports. Now I believe this study only looks at varsity sports and may not take into account club sports (which is what lacrosse may fall into in many states still) but still I found it at least on the surface to be surprising that lacrosse is no where to be found. Not even in the mention of fastest growing. Am I misguided in this thought? Not so long ago I thought Sports Illustrated stated that it was the fastest growing sport in America. Now this may not have hit varsity level high school sports yet, but still wouldn't it fall into a fastest growing area?

http://www.nfhs.org/web/2006/09/partici ... OEM_ID=500

What do you all think about these numbers and when (or will?) lacrosse crack these lists?

I am making a segueway from a thread over in the PNCLL discussion about the addition of Oregon baseball and subsequent addition of women's competitive cheer and subtraction of men's wrestling, you can find that original thought process here:
http://forums.collegelax.us/viewtopic.php?t=8795

I think SI used US Lacrosse figures for the "fastest growing sport" assessment. I am pretty sure that the NFHS does NOT count club teams in their figures. I am pretty sure that lacrosse is club in many if not most states despite high school affiliation. By that I mean it must be sanctioned by the state's governing body of high school sports (like in California, the CIF) to be considered in this study. States like Washington, Oregon, Nevada and Arizona function outside of the sanctioning body.
Furthermore, I think (i could be way off) that the NFHS does not include private schools in their figures. Regardless those figures do not look great to an AD looking to add lacrosse.

buffalowill wrote:I think SI used US Lacrosse figures for the "fastest growing sport" assessment. I am pretty sure that the NFHS does NOT count club teams in their figures. I am pretty sure that lacrosse is club in many if not most states despite high school affiliation. By that I mean it must be sanctioned by the state's governing body of high school sports (like in California, the CIF) to be considered in this study. States like Washington, Oregon, Nevada and Arizona function outside of the sanctioning body.
Furthermore, I think (i could be way off) that the NFHS does not include private schools in their figures. Regardless those figures do not look great to an AD looking to add lacrosse.

I believe NFHS only deals with states where the sport is sanctioned, and I believe there are only 17 such states currently. However, LaxPower lists HS boys lacrosse teams for 38 out of 50 states.

I believe the NFHS would count private schools if they compete in the state federation but not if they have their own leagues. For example, I believe in New England many private schools play NCAA rules in their own league, so the NFHS would not count them. However, in Minnesota many of the teams in the MSHSL league are private; I can't imagine any reason to not count these schools.

In any case, someone lobbying for adding lacrosse is going to have access to the USL data and will no doubt use that in negotiations. In Minnesota, it took a while to get boys lacrosse through (girls lacrosse was an easier sell), but there were 32 MSHSL teams in the first year, plus another 22 club teams (and far too many games in far too short a season, but that's another story).

I did a little digging, and it's actually 19 states sanctioning boys lacrosse as of this season:

CA, CO, CT, DE, GA, IL, MA, ME,MD, MI, MN, NH, NJ, NM, NY, PA, RI, VA, and VT

the New York Times just did a piece about lacrosse in 2005 and they used USL stats.

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2005/05/30/sports/20050530_LACROSSE_GRAPHIC.html